So, yeah, I am alive. Needed some time to clear my head, do some heavy thinking. I won't say I'm doing great, but I'm alive, so I guess that's a start. All anyone can ask for, I suppose.
We're in the middle of changing bosses at work. I'm a little hesitant, mostly because I think so highly of the current boss I have, who's getting moved up a level, so go him, I guess. But that leaves me coping with someone new who doesn't have a real understanding of what it is I do. I suppose that's okay, because a lot of people don't really understand what I do. It's a relatively new specializiation and takes a lot of patience and a lot of coping. Community management is, I think, going to be a relatively high burnout division of PR/marketing, mainly because it's essentially a shitcatcher job.
(Those of you who have been awaiting a tirade about the difficulties inherent in this field, prepare yourselves, although you do NOT have permission to reprint this anywhere else.)
Much of the time is spent listening to people with problems. Sometimes they're technical problems, sometimes they're disagreements about gameplay design, sometimes it's just people wanting to vent without any real basis of fact. This is what I spend a good portion of the day reading through and keeping tabs on. Where are the fires, how bad are they, what should we worry about and what's just background noise. It's a series of judgment calls based on volume, voracity, severity and clarity of presentation. Think of it this way -- if everyone who bought a car wrote an email about their car, someone would have to sort through all of those emails. Now assume that you give them a message board, where they can each post HUNDREDS of things. There are two or three more exponential levels I could go above that, but regardless, it's a lot of information to take in. And pretty much, it's all bad.
But it's also mainly a firefighter position. I watch, I wait, I control what I can, I report what I cannot. But it's very active at certain points, and very slow at others. Some days I'm doing virtually nothing for half of the day. Other days I'm running around like mad trying to get a billion and one things organized in a relatively short period of time. Some weeks I barely talk to anyone in management. Other weeks, I'll have the General Manager and the Vice President of the studio swinging by my cube once a day. I shit you not. It's most definitely trippy.
On top of that, there's been a whole slew of other shit on top of that going on, so it's been rough, but y'know, coping's something I'm getting good at.
In slightly more positive news, went and saw
Something Corporate at the Fillmore on Monday night. They played with The Juliana Theory, Vendetta Red and Red West. We missed Red West, getting there about 7:40ish, and Vendetta Red were on stage already. Lara really liked them, but they just weren't my bag. The Juliana Theory sounded good, but the lead singer seemed like kind of an arrogant ass. Oh well, they sounded pretty good. I might pick up their new album.
Now
Something Corporate themselves were fucking fantastic. Piano rock at its finest. Andrew McMahon (the lead singer/piano player/main songwriter) is one hell of a talent. I left off their debut album,
"Leaving Through The Window" off my best of the year and I feel really bad about it, because it belongs around #4 or so. (The last few songs are a little weak, but the strength of the other stuff totally makes up for it.) The show was great from the first note to the last riff. They played all the songs I wanted to hear and right in the middle of
"Konstantine" (which is this ten-minute gorgeously depressing song) he broke into the Counting Crows'
"Anna Begins" and made it even more gloriously depressing. He's got this massive mop of hair that kept falling over his eyes, which was great. They opened reading Shel Silverstein's "If We Were A Rock'n'Roll Band" with music played behind it, which was incredibly freakin' cool. Part way through the show, they were about to start
"Konstantine" and some girl yelled from the audience that she wanted to play it. So, sure enough, they pulled the girl up on stage and she could play the beginning part. They let her stay on stage for the whole song. At the end of the song, he talked to the audience a minute and said "I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Rock bands always wrap up their set and then they go offstage and they don't bring the lights up and people clap and they come back out and do more songs. So we're just gonna skip that bullshit and play two more songs before we call it a night, okay?" They wrapped up with
"I Woke Up In A Car", which is a wonderful song about travelling and attachments. After the show, I scored the setlist from the soundtable, and Lara was outside talking to Andrew when I came out from getting my t-shirts, so I got an autograph and got to chat with him for a few mintues. He strikes me as a genuinely nice guy who's just incredibly excited about being able to do what he wants to do and get paid for it. And the band makes GREAT music. But DAMN is he young. He's not even 21 yet. I mean, seriously, between
Something Corporate and
The Music, rock stars are turning into kids. But the concert was just what I needed to make a pretty dark month have a good sweet spot to it. So my hat's off to
Something Corporate for the fantastic show they put on and if you have the chance to see them live, do yourself the favor and take it.
Anyhow, it's starting to roll on late hours, so I better start wrapping up and get my ass to bed soon. There's lots to be said and done over the next few weeks and I don't foresee it getting any easier for a while. Who knows, though, sometimes life surprises me. And I always love it when it does....
NOW PLAYING: Something Corporate -
"Fall"
Lyrics: "How can you ask for me to stay / When all you ever do is go? / Just go / And so I fall / I don't want to feel this small / You know I just can't handle this / Handle this at all / And I'll just fall / I let my heartbeat drop / I falter as the music stops / And you watch me as I stall / And wonder when I fall..."
